Subject: Re: [HAB:] re: Getting ethical by getting highly self-identical
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:17:15 +0100



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com>
>  If you aren't going to read the man, what is the point.  The  issues we 
> discuss here are about reality, but there is no way that  philosophical discussion 
> will ever affect reality or other personalities  unless they are competent 
> enough to do the reading.  

Assume, for a moment, that I am competent enough to do the reading.  

If you are going to  take something seriously, you 
> have to know it and at this level knowing means  reading comprehension.  Experts 
> in general are nonsense because such an  elite attribute immediately makes 
> that individual asymmetrical to others and  poses as a barrier to understanding. 

But each person who reads his work will intepret it in a different way.  I don't think we should approach this as though this man is some kind of god with absolute knowledge.  He may be an expert, but there's not been a theory yet that doesn't have some flaws or gaps so that not all situations are covered. 

You want readers to be skeptical, but at the same time believe in him as the one who knows.


>  You don't 'reach agreement' with an  expert unless you know as much as s/he 
> does, or unless the 'expert' has the  competency to make themselves understood 
> universally, to everybody.   

Oh I see. So you want me to be able to be in agreement with his views.

Communicative competency is an achieved level of 
> awareness which can most  definitely overcome cultural or world-view or 
> paradigmatic differences.   The whole point to becoming competent is to be able to 
> get across these  barriers.  

But you're asking me to be willing to cut across any barriers I may have so I can come to understand Habermas?? That doesn't
sound right.  What if his theory doesn't apply. What if it's just another meaningless ideal and only counts theoretically.

No, few know Habermas, although he is one of the 
> most  well-known of the philosophers.  However, so few people actually read or 
>  bother themselves with philosophy that knowing him or what he says is almost 
>  entirely within the world of postgraduate school academe.  In fact, I  don't 
> think there are any courses about him and he only lectures here in the  US at 
> Northwestern in the summer.
>  
> You didn't read my earlier post: communicative action is highly effective  
> and it is a normative practice among jurists, legislators, and competent  
> interlocutors.  

Ive not met anybody who is competent at it.

In general, strategic action orientations are very  typical because 
> of the paternalistic (read Darwinian) and capitalistic context  of everyday 
> existence.  The typical power relations and their mirrorlike  

read narcissistic?

reactions within 
> gender, racial/ethnic, and class differences are all too  obvious in spite of 
> the regulatory agencies (police) which are all too often  immersed in the same 
> contradictions.  BTW, the ideal speech situation  which you have obviously 
> heard about 

read about.  I have read Habermas. He defends the ideas of the inseparability of truth and goodness, of facts and values, of theory and practice. 
Marx believed that, in capitalist society, all social phenomena must be explained in terms of their economic or material basis. However, Habermas shifts from Marx's analysis of the economic crisis of production to crises of meanings and commitment in capitalist society and proposes ways of overcoming them. He uses the basic conceptual framework of Freud to analyze the lifeworld forces of intersubjectivity among conscious and reflective individuals, and the result is his theory of communicative action.

Communicative competence depends on the use of a universal pragmatics, which should "rationally reconstruct the general structures of speech" (Habermas, 1990, ). Universal pragmatics is based on four validity claims: the claims that the speaker's utterances are comprehensible and that their propositional contents are true, and the claims that the speaker is truthful and that it is right for him to be doing so (McCarthy, 1978, ). 

Jurgen Habermas 1990 "Some Distinctions in Universal Pragmatics." Critical Sociology. 

Thomas McCarthy. 1978 Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. 

is not considered to actually exist  except as an idea which we use 
> to compare real situations against; this gives  us an indication of the degree 
> of distortion that we are dealing with.

Habermas's utopia is a society in which exists the ideal speech situation, in which actors possess all of the relevant background knowledge and linguistic skills to communicate without distortion. Habermas believes that through reason and discourse, humans will come to understand each others' subjective states and reconcile their differences. 

Sue McPherson




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